Boy. And that's but unwholesome food, they say.
Pist. Touch her soft mouth, and march.

Bard. Farewell, hostess.

[Kissing her.

Nym. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but, adieu. Pist. Let housewifery appear: keep close, I thee com

mand.

Host. Farewell; adieu.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.—France. A Room in the French King's Palace.

Flourish. Enter the French King, attended; the Dauphin, the Duke of BURGUNDY, the Constable, and others.

Fr. King. Thus come the English with full power upon us ; And more than carefully it us concerns

To answer royally in our defences.

Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Bretagne,

Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,

And you, Prince Dauphin,-with all swift dispatch,
To line1 and new repair our towns of war

With men of courage and with means defendant;
For England his approaches makes as fierce

As waters to the sucking of a gulf.

It fits us, then, to be as provident

As fear may teach us, out of late examples
Left by the fatal and neglected English
Upon our fields.

Dau.

My most redoubted father,

It is most meet we arm us 'gainst the foe;

For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,

1 To line is to strengthen. Often so. See Macbeth, page 60, note 25.

Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,
But that defences, musters, preparations,

Should be maintain'd, assembled, and collected,

As were a war in expectation.

Therefore, I say 'tis meet we all go forth

To view the sick and feeble parts of France:
And let us do it with no show of fear;

No, with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance : 2
For, my good liege, she is so idly king'd,
Her sceptre so fantastically borne

By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous 3 youth,
That fear attends her not.

Con.
O peace, Prince Dauphin !
You are too much mistaken in this King:
Question your Grace the late ambassadors,-
With what great state he heard their embassy,
How well supplied with noble counsellors,

4

How modest in exception, and withal
How terrible in constant resolution, —
And you shall find his vanities forespent
Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
Covering discretion with a coat of folly ;

As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots

2 Morris is an old corruption of Morisco. The morris-dance is thought to have sprung from the Moors, and to have come through Spain, where it is said to be still delighted in by both natives and strangers, under the name of Fandango.

3 Humorous is freakish, frolicsome, or governed by whims. Hotspur, having the same thing in view, calls him "the madcap Prince of Wales." See page 41, note 5.

4 That is, modest, or diffident in raising objections, in finding fault, or expressing disapproval or dissent,

That shall first spring and be most delicate.

Dau. Well, 'tis not so, my Lord High-Constable;
But though we think it so, it is no matter:
In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh
The enemy more mighty than he seems:
So the proportions of defence are fill'd;
Which 5 of a weak and niggardly projection,
Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting
A little cloth.

Fr. King. Think we King Harry strong;
And, princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.
The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us;
And he is bred out of that bloody strain7
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too-much memorable shame
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captived by the hand

Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;
Whiles that his mighty sire-on mountain standing,8

5 The grammar of this passage is somewhat perplexed. Being is understood after which; and not merely which, but the whole clause is the subject of doth spoil. So that the meaning comes thus: The ordering of which after a weak and niggardly project or plan is like the work of a miser, who spoils his coat with scanting a little cloth.— For the meaning of proportions, in the line before, see page 57, note 36.

6 To flesh, as the word is here used, is to feed as upon flesh; to satiate, to gorge. So in 2 Henry IV., iv. 5: "The wild dog shall flesh his tooth in every innocent." For kindred senses of the same word see King John, page 126, note 5; and 2 Henry IV., page 62, note 19.

7 Strain for stock, lineage, or race. So in Julius Cæsar, v. 1: "If thou wert the noblest of thy strain." See, also, Much Ado, page 54, note 34.

8 The battle of Cressy took place August 25, 1346, the Black Prince being then fifteen years old. The King had knighted him a short time before. During the battle, the King did in faet keep his station on the top of a hill, from whence he calmly surveyed the field of action, where the Prince was

Up in the air, crown'd with the golden sun
Saw his heroical seed, and smiled to see him,
Mangle the work of Nature, and deface

The patterns that by God and by French fathers
Had twenty years been made. This is a stem
Of that victorious stock; and let us fear
The native mightiness and fate of him.

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. Ambassadors from Harry King of England

Do crave admittance to your Majesty.

Fr. King. We'll give them present audience. Go, and bring them.-[Exeunt Messenger and certain Lords.

You see this chase is hotly follow'd, friends.

Dau. Turn head, and stop pursuit ; for coward dogs Most spend their mouths,9 when what they seem to threaten Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,

Take up the English short; and let them know

Of what a monarchy you are the head:

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin

As self-neglecting.

Re-enter Lords, with EXETER and Train.

Fr. King.

From our brother England?

Exe. From him; and thus he greets your Majesty.

in immediate command. When the fight was waxing hot and dangerous, the Earl of Warwick dispatched a messenger to the King to request succours for the Prince. The King inquired if his son were killed or wounded, and, being answered in the negative, "Then," said he, "tell Warwick he shall have no assistance. Let the boy win his spurs. He and those who have him in charge shall earn the whole glory of the day." This reply is said to have so inspired the fighters, that they soon carried all before them. • Spending the mouth was the sportsman's phrase for barking.

He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,
That you divest yourself, and lay apart
The borrow'd glories, that, by gift of Heaven,
By law of Nature and of nations, 'long

To him and to his heirs; namely, the crown,
And all wide-stretchèd honours that pertain,
By custom and the ordinance of times,
Unto the crown of France. That you may know

'Tis no sinister nor no awkward 10 claim,

Pick'd from the worm-holes of long-vanish'd days,

Nor from the dust of old oblivion raked,

He sends you this most memorable line,11 [Gives a paper. In every branch truly demonstrative ;

Willing you overlook his pedigree :

And when you find him evenly derived
From his most famed of famous ancestors,
Edward the Third, he bids you then resign
Your crown and kingdom, indirectly 12 held
From him the native and true challenger.
Fr. King. Or else what follows?

Exe. Bloody constraint: for, if you hide the crown
Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it :
Therefore in fiery tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
Deliver up the crown; and to take mercy

10 Awkward is here used in its primitive sense of perverse or distorted. 11 Another instance of the passive and active forms used indiscriminately, — memorable for memorative, or that which reminds. — Line here is genealogy, or tracing of lineage.

12 Indirectly in the sense of the Latin indirectus; unjustly or wrongfully. Repeatedly so. See King John, page 51, notę 7.